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Friday, February 24, 2017

If you don't know much the about horrific tragedy of what's happened in Syria in the last several years, Elliot Ackerman's terrific, taut, engrossing new novel Dark At The Crossing is a good first step to learning. But as good as this novel is, it's not a war novel. Instead, it's a story about the terrible, no-win choices — the trade-offs one has to make, the pangs of conscience one has to ignore — war creates for those whose lives have been devastated by war.

Ackerman's bona fides to write about the Syrian Civil War are beyond reproach — he served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and won a Purple Heart, Silver Star, and Bronze Star for Valor. He currently is based in Istanbul, covering the Syrian Civil War war for various news outlets.

The novel is about a guy named Haris Abadi, an Iraqi-born, American-naturalized would-be warrior who was an interpreter for US troops in Iraq, and now is attempting to cross into Syria from Turkey to fight for the Syrian Free Army. It's 2014 and ISIS is beginning its rise, creating a three-way conflict between themselves, the rebels (Free Syrian Army), and Assad's regime. Abadi, who has some demons to exorcise from his service in Iraq, hopes to earn redemption by fighting for what he sees as a just cause.

But he makes it no farther than the Syrian/Turkish border before he is promptly robbed and left to fend for himself. He's rescued by a man named Amir, a Syrian living in Turkey who works for a "research firm," preparing reports about the war for foreign governments. Amir, and his wife, Daphne's, young daughter was killed in an explosion in Aleppo, and Daphne has never quite recovered.

So as the novel unfolds, Daphne and Haris form a bond, and endeavor to help each other get across the border, each for his/her own reasons. But how will they accomplish this? What part of their souls will they have to sell?

I took a chance on this novel after writer Nicholas Mainieri recommended it, and it's one I'll highly recommend as well. It's as engrossing, authentic-feeling, and well-written as anything I've read this year. If you've read and enjoyed novels/story collections like Phil Klay's Reployment, David Abrams' Fobbit, Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds, or Ross Ritchell's The Knife, all novels written by soldiers, you'll love this too.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

A Man Called Ove, by Swedish novelist Fredrik Backman is one of those odd-but-awesome book stories where the book did okay when it was first published (in 2014), but has recently enjoyed a renaissance due to word-of-mouth recommendations, as well as the hit Swedish-language movie (oh, and probably the overwhelming need for a feel-good book in these rather trying times). So, for the sake of upping my cultural literacy I gave it a shot.

Often, as I was reading it while working at RoscoeBooks, someone would see the book on the counter and comment on how delightful it is or how much they loved it.

Even after I loved the first chapter (in which Ove squares off with a sales associate at an electronics store as he tries to buy an iPad), I tried really hard not to like it the rest of it. It's a little a cheesy at times, the grumpy-old-man trope is nothing even remotely new (for my money, Sully from Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool is still the paragon), and the translation is often a bit clunky. But, then, by the end....I loved it. It won me over. I couldn't help it.

It's a charming tale of a guy named Ove, confronting what he believes to be all the various violations of good sense and decency of everyday life in his little neighborhood in a small town in Sweden. We learn in the first few pages that Ove's wife has died, and he's been forced into early retirement. So with nothing else to live for, Ove decides to exit stage left. But then life keep interceding — he can't help himself from helping other people. (The one thing that kind of shocked me about this novel is its sort of cavalier attitude toward suicide. But not a big deal...)

Ove becomes more lovable the more you learn about his backstory — chapters alternate between his current life and his history, which includes more than his fair share of tragedy and sadness. In the present, he makes begrudging friends with new neighbors, a family four with a fifth on the way. We also learn about his long-running feud with his neighbor Rune, a grouchy guy just like him. But against all decency, in Ove's view, Rune has the gall to drive a Volvo instead of Ove's beloved Saabs. The final nail in the coffin in their tenuous relationship is when Rune buys a BMW. Then it's all-out war.

In the present, Rune has fallen on tough times, and the dreaded "white shirts," government bureaucrats who have been Ove's life-long nemeses, are threatening to remove Rune from his wife and his home and put him in state-sponsored care. Will Ove help Rune, or will their long-stand rivalry be too much to overcome?

If you're for something you can laugh with, that's heavy at times, but ultimately redemptive, this is your novel. You may not totally like Ove all the time, but it's hard not to enjoy his story.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

First off, in case you're wondering already, a "bardo" is a Tibetan word for an "intermediate state," a sort of purgatory between one life and another. In George Saunders' ridiculously smart, entirely weird first novel Lincoln in the Bardo, a bunch of interstitial beings (ghosts, if you want to not think too hard about it) hang out in a graveyard and discuss their personal lives, as they were, as well as life in general, truth, kindness, empathy, and grief.

What sparks these conversations is the arrival of a new person to their bardo — Abraham's Lincoln's son Willie, who has just died of typhoid fever. It's February 1862, the nation is at war, and Lincoln is doing all he can to hold both his personal life and the country together. Lincoln periodically visits to mourn his son. It's funny, and perhaps significant, that Lincoln himself, despite the title, is never actually IN the bardo. He's in the grave yard where the other occupants of the bardo are stuck, but he himself isn't in that interstitial state. He's still alive!!

Much of the "action" of the novel reads like a play. Our main three "actors" include a guy named Hans Vollman, who died getting brained with a falling ceiling beam, a freak accident. Poor Hans had recently gotten married, and was about to finally consummate his marriage with his beautiful young wife when he's abruptly ripped from life and deposited in the bardo. Roger Bevins III is a gay man whose lover made fun of him in front of their friends, so he killed himself. And finally, there's a reverend named Everly Thomas, who acts as the sort of conscience of the novel. While we don't know how he died, he knows more than all the the ghosts — he's the only who knows he's dead, having actually made it all the way to the pearly gates before absconding to the bardo. But he has a secret.

And so the occupants of the bardo — including Willie — learn that they can
"enter" corporeal bodies (as well as each other), and hear that person's
thoughts. It's sort of a literal way of seeing the world through
someone else's eyes, and trying to understand their sides of things — a
constant theme throughout the novel.

Interspersed throughout these conversations are snippets from real newspapers and letters from historical people detailing the mood of the country at this point in history. It's not good, to say the least. For instance, Lincoln is crushed in the press for having a big party at the White House, both while the country is at war and also while his son is sick.

While the novel clocks in about 320 pages, you can probably read it two or three sittings. It's not text heavy at all. But to truly unlock what Saunders is up to here, it definitely requires a re-reading or two. I have not yet done that, mostly because it was a novel I sometimes felt like I was enduring more than I was enjoying. I mean, this novel is unquestionably the work of a genius writer. There's no doubt about that. And I would recommend it highly just for the wholly unique reading experience, as well as it's quite-frequent profundity. But it's certainly not something you'll want to bring to the beach with you this summer.

(Finally, if you're interested, here's my favorite paragraph from the novel, that helps tie together the themes of empathy and grief:

“His mind was freshly
inclined toward sorrow; toward the
fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden
of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever one took in this world, one
must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged,
neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could
to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current
state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather, it’s like had
been felt, would yet be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time,
and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be
of no help to anyone and, given that his position in the world situated him to
be either of great help or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could
help it.”)

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Katie Kitamura's novel about a failed marriage isn't like Gone Girl or any of the other tent poles of the recent entries into the "bad romance" genre. This is a wholly unique take on this type of novel, and it's really terrific.

A Separation, which is out today, is a slow-burning, introspective, and incredibly astutely observed look at a relationship that has gone sour. It's the story of an unnamed narrator and her husband Christopher, Londoners who have separated, ostensibly due to Christopher's multiple infidelities.

Christopher has gone to Greece to work on a book, and then promptly disappeared. Christopher's mother Isabel — a domineering, annoying woman who never warmed to the narrator because she "stole" her son — calls our narrator and asks her to go to Greece to find her husband. Isabel doesn't know the two have separated, and the narrator chooses to keep that secret.

So to keep up appearances, off to Greece she goes to find her soon-to-be-ex-husband. While she's there, she begins to slowly reconsider her separation — or at least try to better parse her feelings for it and for Christopher, now that they're even more separated than they were before. She literally has no idea where he is — didn't even know he'd gone to Greece. What's happened to him? Will she find him? Has he taken even more extraordinary means than are usually necessary to separate himself from her? Or is he just on another tawdry tryst?

Part of what makes this novel special is that it's a novel about ambiguity, but told in language so precise and carefully chosen. Kitamura is an amazingly talented writer — her narrator can spend several pages watching a conversation
between two people, describing their facial expressions and cadence, and
tell us what she thinks they're talking about. And it's fascinating! But again, this is not a novel you'll confuse with a thriller. Watching the introspection, watching her her puzzle things out as best she can with incomplete, indeed, ambiguous information is truly the strength of this great read.

Despite the commonality of failed relationships, this is also a novel about subverting what's normal, what's expected. To further this notion, the narrator tells a brief story about a friend who went on a date with a man she really liked. At the end of the night, he invites her up "for coffee." Instead of inventing an excuse, she tells him she can't because she's on her period, which is actually true. On the surface, it's a hilarious non-sequitur. But everyone knows coffee doesn't mean coffee — only her friend has subverted the purposeful ambiguity of what it means to be invited up for coffee. The guy never calls her back.

It's little touches like these that makes this a really terrific reading experience. There is a lot going on in this slim, taut novel, many themes (grief, loyalty, and whether monogamy is still pragmatic) intersect and augment each other. It's a savagely smart and masterfully crafted novel — very highly recommended.

Friday, February 3, 2017

If you're one of Amor Towles' rabid fans (I am a new one!), you probably know his story: He spent 21 years working in banking before publishing his first novel, Rules of Civility, in 2011. Thank goodness he found his calling! Because whether this fellow is writing about horrific traffic accidents, jazz, women's clothes, or sordid love
triangles, he's always entertaining. I expect he could write technical manuals about elevator maintenance, and they'd be enjoyable. He has such a fluent, articulate, evocative, warm
style, and it's on full display in this terrific novel of 1938 New York City.

Katey Kontent and her friend Eve meet a dashing banker named Tinker (the names, my god, the names!) on New Year's Eve, 1937, and are swept up by his charm (indeed, civility) and he by their spirit and cleverness. These are two modern, independent women, enjoying all that New York City has to offer. But what starts off as a possible competition for Tinker's affections and perhaps a love triangle morphs into something...well, I don't want to say. It's the surprise — the way Towles flips your expectations totally on their ears that makes this novel especially fun.

Part of the strength of this novel beyond its plot is how alive late 1930s New York is. The drinks flow, the buildings shimmer, the steam rises in the summer, and the jewels of New York's society folks — of which Katey and Eve find themselves for the first time — sparkle. New York will be shattered by the war in just a few short years, but for now, it's a sort utopia. And Towles captures this really well.

Full disclosure: I actually liked A Gentleman In Moscow, which I read last fall, a bit more than this novel — there are few dead spots and missteps here. But again, because of Towles' smooth style, I didn't mind too much when the plot lags. It's a quick read, and one that leaves you more than a little shocked when you unlock its secrets.